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Friday, 22 March 2013

LIFE OF PI: BOOK REVIEW

Good reads review

Author:Yann MartlePublished on: 11th sept 2001

Genre:classics

Life of Pi is a masterful and
utterly original novel that is at once the story of a young castaway who faces
immeasurable hardships on the high seas, and a meditation on religion, faith,
art and life that is as witty as it is profound. Using the threads of all of
our best stories, Yann Martel has woven a glorious spiritual adventure that
makes us question what it means to be alive, and to believe.

Growing up in Pondicherry, India, Piscine Molitor Patel - known as Pi - has a
rich life. Bookish by nature, young Pi acquires a broad knowledge of not only
the great religious texts but of all literature, and has a great curiosity
about how the world works. His family runs the local zoo, and he spends many of
his days among goats, hippos, swans, and bears, developing his own theories
about the nature of animals and how human nature conforms to it. Pi’s family
life is quite happy, even though his brother picks on him and his parents
aren’t quite sure how to accept his decision to simultaneously embrace and
practise three religions - Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam.

But despite the lush and nurturing variety of Pi’s world, there are broad
political changes afoot in India, and when Pi is sixteen, his parents decide
that the family needs to escape to a better life. Choosing to move to Canada,
they close the zoo, pack their belongings, and board a Japanese cargo ship
called the Tsimtsum. Travelling with them are
many of their animals, bound for zoos in North America. However, they have only
just begun their journey when the ship sinks, taking the dreams of the Patel
family down with it. Only Pi survives, cast adrift in a lifeboat with the
unlikeliest oftravelling companions: a zebra, an orang-utan, a hyena, and a
450-pound Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Thus begins Pi Patel’s epic, 227-day voyage across the Pacific, and the
powerful story of faith and survival at the heart of Life of Pi. Worn and scared,
oscillating between hope and despair, Pi is witness to the playing out of the
food chain, quite aware of his new position within it. When only the tiger is
left of the seafaring menagerie, Pi realizes that his survival depends on his
ability to assert his own will, and sets upon a grand and ordered scheme to
keep from being Richard Parker’s next meal.

As Yann Martel has said in one interview, “The theme of this novel can be
summarized in three lines. Life is a story. You can choose your story. And a
story with an imaginative overlay is the better story.” And for Martel, the greatest
imaginative overlay is religion. “God is a shorthand for anything that is
beyond the material - any greater pattern of meaning.” In Life of Pi, the question of
stories, and of what stories to believe, is front and center from the
beginning, when the author tells us how he was led to Pi Patel and to this
novel: in an Indian coffee house, a gentleman told him, “I have a story that
will make you believe in God.” And as this novel comes to its brilliant
conclusion, Pi shows us that the story with the imaginative overlay is also the
story that contains the most truth.

Life of Pi is a masterful and
utterly original novel that is at once the story of a young castaway who faces
immeasurable hardships on the high seas, and a meditation on religion, faith,
art and life that is as witty as it is profound. Using the threads of all of
our best stories, Yann Martel has woven a glorious spiritual adventure that
makes us question what it means to be alive, and to believe.

Growing up in Pondicherry, India, Piscine Molitor Patel - known as Pi - has a
rich life. Bookish by nature, young Pi acquires a broad knowledge of not only
the great religious texts but of all literature, and has a great curiosity
about how the world works. His family runs the local zoo, and he spends many of
his days among goats, hippos, swans, and bears, developing his own theories
about the nature of animals and how human nature conforms to it. Pi’s family
life is quite happy, even though his brother picks on him and his parents
aren’t quite sure how to accept his decision to simultaneously embrace and
practise three religions - Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam.

But despite the lush and
nurturing variety of Pi’s world, there are broad political changes afoot in
India, and when Pi is sixteen, his parents decide that the family needs to
escape to a better life. Choosing to move to Canada, they close the zoo, pack
their belongings, and board a Japanese cargo ship called the Tsimtsum. Travelling with them are
many of their animals, bound for zoos in North America. However, they have only
just begun their journey when the ship sinks, taking the dreams of the Patel
family down with it. Only Pi survives, cast adrift in a lifeboat with the
unlikeliest oftravelling companions: a zebra, an orang-utan, a hyena, and a
450-pound Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Thus begins Pi Patel’s
epic, 227-day voyage across the Pacific, and the powerful story of faith and
survival at the heart of Life of Pi. Worn
and scared, oscillating between hope and despair, Pi is witness to the playing
out of the food chain, quite aware of his new position within it. When only the
tiger is left of the seafaring menagerie, Pi realizes that his survival depends
on his ability to assert his own will, and sets upon a grand and ordered scheme
to keep from being Richard Parker’s next meal.

As Yann Martel has said in one interview, “The theme of this novel can be
summarized in three lines. Life is a story. You can choose your story. And a
story with an imaginative overlay is the better story.” And for Martel, the
greatest imaginative overlay is religion. “God is a shorthand for anything that
is beyond the material - any greater pattern of meaning.” In Life of Pi, the question of
stories, and of what stories to believe, is front and center from the
beginning, when the author tells us how he was led to Pi Patel and to this
novel: in an Indian coffee house, a gentleman told him, “I have a story that
will make you believe in God.” And as this novel comes to its brilliant
conclusion, Pi shows us that the story with the imaginative overlay is also the
story that contains the most truth.

MY REVIEW

Okay yea, I read the book after the movie came
out (of course I saw the movie too), but I read the book first.When Iread the
book for the very first time, i couldn’t understand it, i was totally lost
(which i think is common ). Pi (Piscine Molitor) who was a very strong
believer of god, and who also followed 3 religions, yes 3 , he was Hindu by
birth, Christian and Muslim by choice, and he practiced all the traditions, we
will come to that later, so where was I? So yea 3 religions at once went
through a lot at a very tender age. He lost his family in a shipwreck due to
storm, his first love whom he left back in India before movinghalf way round the world, lost all the zoo animals, the only way of
their livelihoodand got stuck with a
tiger on a boat. In the beginning of the story, when Piwas asked by the interviewer, says by the end
of the story, he would start believing in the very existence of god, which was
again a contradiction for me, I mean he went through all these and still he
says you will believe in god, I was confused, and it took me 3 complete reading
of the book to actually understand what he meant. But sorry I will not reveal
it here, I don’t want to take away the very pleasure you deserve to get after
reading the book .

Life of pi, is a great book full of humour,
dreams, spirituality, realisation of truth, co operation, belief, and above all
the idea that enemies are made by choice not birth. To be honest, each time I
read this book, I read it in a different way, with a whole different
explanation, it was like swimming in a vast ocean without knowing where it will
lead to, but new explorations in the path and a new surprise in the end. It’s a
must read, even if you have actually seen the movie.

You know guys, what’s the biggest problems,
sometimes to make the movie brief, people cut the story in such a way that you
get a whole different idea about something, which is not meant that way in the
book. When i saw the movie, I felt, no it was not like that, wait what? When did
that happen in the book, nope that’s not what it meant. There are like 9-10
differences between the movie and the actual book, and that’s way too much.

So yea I
would really suggest reading the book rather than just watching the movie. It’s
totally worth it!

I would
give it: 4/5 points

That is:

4 flowers!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG did I
forget to mention about Richard parker? Well he is the tiger! Yet another
irony, the name of the boy is Pi and he owns a tiger named Richard parker. Well
here he is: